To the member from Mississauga–Lakeshore: Thank you for your presentation.

I mentioned that in 1998, then-Premier Mike Harris forced six municipalities and the city of Toronto—which included Scarborough, York, Etobicoke, East York and North York—into an amalgamated city. This city is now three million people in size, with almost $400 billion of GDP. When I compare that to what Mississauga is—it’s about 800,000 people, I believe, by 2019 numbers, and about $97 billion in GDP. I also recognize that we were not necessarily consulted, and neither were any of those five other municipalities, when the amalgamation happened.

Because dissolution was not sought by Brampton or Caledon, how can your government ensure that this dissolution will benefit all three local municipalities?

Thank you to the member for his excellent one-hour presentation on very complicated subject matter, which doesn’t have a lot of details. This debate reminds me of the time that, at that point in time, Premier Mike Harris was forcing six former municipalities to merge to now create this new mega-city that we have in the city of Toronto. Toronto today, of course, has a population of three million people. We have a GDP over—I think it’s almost $400 billion.

Interestingly enough, I remember at that time in 1997, there was a pre-amalgamation report that this House had produced talking about the potential savings of $82 million by forcing those cities into a marriage. By 1999, the city of Toronto commissioned their own report and they found that there were no promised cost-savings whatsoever. So my question to the member is: Without deep analysis and serious, robust consultation, how can we be guaranteed that the promises that the Premier is making will come true?